By the Pricking of My Thumbs
by Blue Lace Agate
Summary: One Halloween night, Tea tries to raise Atem's spirit. She winds up with a completely different cauldron of trouble. Vexshipping.
1. In which a spell is cast

A/N: My apologies to _Deserted Distractions_ readers, but I needed to take a break from that story for a while. Enjoy this little Halloween treat instead. With any luck, DD will be back strong in November.

* * *

The full harvest moon shone yellow gold onto the empty cemetery, the only light in the inky sky. Far off in the distance, the sounds of trick-or-treaters could be heard, but they grew fainter and less frequent. The night had grown black and chill. The time for children to laugh at the darkness was almost over. Now it was time for the darkness to laugh at them.

Tea shivered, wishing she had brought a thicker jacket. The flimsy black cardigan that she wore now barely took the edge off the night air. But a warm jacket would have looked odd with her costume—a fairly generic witch's outfit, with a short tulle skirt and garish purple accents—and she hadn't wanted any awkward questions. If any of her friends had the least idea of what she was doing out here tonight…

She got to her feet and let out a breath. For the briefest of instants, it hung frosty in the air, and then dissipated. It was time. It wasn't witching hour—midnight was still hours away—but it was as late as she could safely leave it.

The cemetery was deserted. She had been afraid that it would draw rowdy teenagers looking for dumb pranks or cheap scares, but no one had come near it all night. The place was as silent as the dead.

An owl hooted from some far-off tree and a chill ran down Tea's spine. She ignored it. She wasn't going to be frightened of spooky sounds in the dark or of a couple old headstones—even if more than one of them did seem to glow eerily in the moonlight. She swallowed hard. What was there to be afraid of? She'd let sleeping dead lie. And if they didn't sleep—so much the better. After all, that was what she was here for, wasn't it? To wake the dead.

Sucking in one last deep breath, she walked to the center of the cemetery. There was something of a clearing there—an open space with no graves for several yards in all directions. Tea stood in the middle of it now. She unhooked the little pouch from where she'd concealed it under her skirt. She took out the long white taper and the cigarette lighter. She lit the candle and held it aloft.

"Spirits in the ground, hear my voice.

Sleepers in the earth, awake and listen."

Her voice trembled and the candle flame quavered.

"I come to call forth one of your number.

I summon your kin-spirit from the earth."

Of course, he wasn't buried here or anywhere remotely near here. There wasn't the smallest chance that, in life, he'd ever so much as breathed the same air as any of the people buried here, in the Domino Cemetery. But the woman at the shop had told her that performing the ritual in a cemetery was sure to improve its efficacy. "Dead call to dead," she had told her.

Keeping the candle steady as best she could with one hand, she reached into the pouch and pulled out the dried angelica. She crumbled a few of the leaves over the candle.

"Let this light be sacred.

Let the calling be pure."

She repeated the process with the salt, the lavender, and the crust of bread. By this point, the wax was dripping dangerously towards her fingers. Carefully, the way the woman had shown her, she tilted the candle to allow the wax to drip onto the ground, while keeping the flame from going out. She formed a circle around herself, and then took out a strip of white linen and wrapped it around the taper's base to protect her hands.

"My call is not for knowledge," she whispered aloud to the darkness. "My call is not for might. My call is not for riches, nor for blood, nor spite."

As she said the words, she fed the candle flame from her pouch of ingredients—a scrap of paper from a book for knowledge, an oak splinter for power, a corner of a dollar bill for wealth, a thorn for spite. For blood, she pricked her finger with the thorn and let the resulting red drop splash into the flame. The flame guttered and for an awful second, she thought it would go out. But then it flared back up, bright as ever, and she went on with the ritual.

"Restless spirit, hear my voice.

Sojourner from beyond the grave, come to me."

She plucked a hair from her head and fed it to the candle flame.

"With this token and with my name, I bind myself to you." She whispered her full name to the darkness. "Now, come as I call, come from the distant past, come from the shades of Egypt that was, as with this token and with your name, I bind you to myself."

With trembling fingers, she plucked the last item from her pouch. It was a scrap of a leather strap, one she had taken from the tomb that the Ishtars guarded, back last year. As she fed it to the fire, she felt a shift in the air, a sudden energy. The night was as silent as ever, yet she felt it humming with energy, Excitement pooled in her stomach. It was working!

_At last,_ she thought. They would be together again, if only for one night. She squeezed her eyes shut. _Atem, I'll see you soon. _All that remained was for her to speak his name, his true name, aloud, and the spell would be sealed.

She opened her eyes. She sucked in her breath. A shape was taking form just outside the circle. Though it was still shadowy and hazy, it was definitely a man's shape, and growing clearer by the second. She smiled and extended her hand in welcome. "Come," she whispered. "I call you…" The words died on her tongue as suddenly the dark figure grew clear. _"Bakura?"_

The candle flame flickered out.


	2. In which a command is given

Tea blinked in the sudden darkness as the shadowy figure stepped inside the circle. She sucked in a breath as she held out her hand, hoping against hope.

Slowly, her eyes adjusted. Tea sagged weakly and dropped her hand. It wasn't Atem. It wasn't Atem at all.

The man standing next to her, looking anything but happy, was none other than the Spirit of the Millennium Ring. And despite the dim of the moonlit night, Tea had absolutely no trouble seeing that he was stark naked.

Yanking her eyes upwards, she glared at him. "What did you do?" she all but shrieked. "Go back! I don't want _you!"_

The Spirit—although that hardly seemed an apt description when it was clear he had an altogether too physical body—arched a snowy eyebrow. "Not exactly the reception I was expecting. After all, you did call me back from the dead."

"Not you! A—The Pharaoh!" she snapped. She shoved at his bare chest, trying to push him out of the circle. She hadn't anticipated just how _solid_ he would be. She threw all of her strength against him and succeeded in moving him back maybe half an inch.

He chuckled—a deep, throaty sound that shivered through her. "I'd forgotten how nice it is to have a body."

Tea pulled away. "I don't understand," she fumed. "The spell was for the Pharaoh! The _Pharaoh_ was supposed to come, not _you_."

"Then why did you burn my sandal strap?" the Spirit wanted to know. He looked several shades too smug for it to be a genuine question.

"Your sandal strap?" screeched Tea. "What was your sandal strap doing in the Pharaoh's tomb."

"Ah." The Spirit tapped a bony finger against the side of his jaw. "There's a rather involved explanation to that particular question."

"Forget it. I'm not interested. The only thing I care about it sending you back." Tea grabbed the cigarette lighter back out of her pouch. There had to be a counterspell. Sure, she hadn't exactly come prepared to work one, but how hard could it be?

She lit the taper.

"Spirits of the earth, take back your own," she improvised. "Dead receive back flesh and bone." She fixed her eyes on Bakura, who was watching with amusement. "Let chanting voice and candle flame undo the work which has been wrought and send back what has been brought."

She rummaged through the pouch, but she'd used up all her herbs and other ingredients on the previous spell. For lack of anything else to try, she brandished the candle in Bakura's direction. "Back to the darkness!" she cried wildly. "Back to the tomb! Back to the shadows and back to your doom!"

"You're a terrible witch, you know that?" Bakura didn't budge an inch, except for folding his arms across his chest. He looked utterly composed—entirely too composed for someone without a stitch of clothing on. Heat suddenly flooded Tea's cheeks and she dropped her eyes.

"I'm not a witch," she muttered towards the ground. Sullenly, she blew out the candle.

"Well, that much was fairly obvious, I have to say. Although you are ugly enough for one."

Her eyes snapped up. "Take that back!"

Bakura rolled his eyes. "Come off it. Of all the problems you've got right now, is boosting your self-esteem really the top of the list?"

"Maybe it would be if you'd go away like I told you to!"

Bakura shrugged. "I can't. The barriers between worlds are back up." His eyes wandered over her. "What are you _wearing,_ by the way?"

Tea hugged her arms to her chest, as though they could cover up all of her cheap costume. "It's Halloween, okay?" Belatedly, she recalled that she was talking to a millennia-old Egyptian spirit. Did he even know what Halloween was? "Maybe you saw Ryou celebrate it sometime? You know, with all the costumes and the candy?"

"Oh, right, that." Bakura nodded thoughtfully. "Makes sense. If I recall correctly, the holiday, nonsensical as it is, is timing when the natural world draws near to the spirit world. Hence why even _your _conjuring managed to work."

"_Work_ is such a relative term," Tea sighed.

How had this happened? It had all seemed so straightforward back in the shop. Well, maybe not straightforward, exactly. She'd figured there was a better than half chance that she would say the wrong words, or mix up the order of the ingredients, or drop the candle and put it out. Even if she performed the ritual perfectly, she had been prepared for it not to work simply because she didn't have any knack for magic or because the spell she'd been sold was just a load of phooey. She'd imagined countless ways the spell could simply fail to do anything. But she'd never once imagined it could do something like this.

She looked back over at the shamelessly naked Bakura and stifled a groan.

She'd have to go back to the magic shop. If anyone was going to have a clue of what to do now, it would have to be the woman who'd sold her the spell in the first place.

Tea put the taper and cigarette lighter back into her pouch and refastened it around her waist—on the outside of her skirt this time. Keeping her activities a secret no longer seemed the highest priority.

"Going somewhere?" Bakura asked curiously.

"As a matter of fact, I am." Tea looked at him over her shoulder. "_I_ am going back to the shop to find a way to undo all of this. And _you_ are going to stay right here."

Bakura unfolded his arms. "And if I don't want to?"

Tea gave him her best babysitting look, a quelling stare that could stop a tantruming two-year old dead in its tracks. "You're going to sit right there on that exact spot and when I come back, I'd better not find you an inch out of place."

Bakura sat.

With a self-satisfied nod, Tea stalked off into the night.


	3. In which trouble is doubled

It didn't take very long for Tea's satisfaction to melt away.

Despite the full moon, it was a dark night. Headstones lined the path out of the cemetery, casting eerie shadows in the moonlight. A tiny shiver ran down the small of Tea's back. Small wonder the area was deserted.

At last, she reached the end of the cemetery. The door of the ornate iron gate clanged shut behind her. Still, the knot in Tea's stomach didn't loosen. It was still a long, dark walk to the way to the magic shop—and in generally _living_ people caused more trouble than the dead. Tea wished she had stuck a can of pepper spray in her pouch—just in case. It was Halloween, after all. Who knew what kind of troublemakers were running loose?

After several minutes passed, however, without running into any kind of trouble, Tea began to feel better. Heck, she hadn't even seen anyone else around, even though she was walking though a section of old, shabby shops. Let's face it, this part of town wasn't interesting enough to be worth vandalizing. The rowdy teenagers were probably all drunk at some party by now or they were out egging people's houses. She just hoped they didn't hit the Game Shop again this year. As for trick-or-treaters, the ones that hadn't straggled off to bed would be in the nicer neighborhoods. That just left shopkeepers and late-night shoppers. So far, she'd seen no evidence of either one—although there were a few places with their lights on: the laundromat, the Qwikmart, and the little Mexican _panadería._ Tea had a sudden urge to stop in and see if they were selling any _pan de muerto_, but she stopped herself. She was on a mission, after all. She didn't want to leave Bakura to his own devices a second longer than necessary. Who knew what kind of catastrophes might befall them all?

A sudden sound from behind her—close behind her—made her stop dead in her tracks.

"Wh-who's there?" She tried to make her voice sound firm and commanding, but it came out more like a squeak.

There was no reply, but as she strained her ears, she swore she could hear someone breathing.

A cry gurgled up in her throat, but before it escaped her lips, a hand slammed over her mouth, stifling her scream.

It wasn't the first time Tea'd been grabbed from behind. In fact, it was a lot closer to the twentieth. When you hung out with Yugi Muto, stuff like that tended to happen.

She hadn't brought along any pepper spray that night, but she had brought along the eight months of self defense training she'd been investing in ever since she'd seen the flyer in the ballet studio.

_Stomp the foot. Knee the groin. Twist. Slash eyes and run like hell. _The mantra flashed through her head only a millisecond before she started putting it into action. But she only got as far as the second step before she ran into an unexpected, er, situation. When she brought her right knee up sharply into her assailant's groin, she couldn't help noticing that the, ahem, groin in question was entirely…naked.

_"Bakura?"_ she gasped. Actually, since a large, firm hand was still clamped over her mouth, it came out as _"Huhurra?"_ It seemed to be intelligible enough for thief, since he removed his hand and spun her around to face him.

"You!" she spluttered for the second time in less than thirty minutes time. "What are you _doing?_ Here? Let alone sneaking up on me an—and _grabbing_ me!" Tea was really worked up now. The words were spewing from her mouth just as fast as they could, with little regard to their coherence.

He shrugged. "I didn't want you to scream."

"Oh, well that's all fine and dandy then. Just go and scare me half to death. Just as long as we don't attract any attention. It's not like you're totally **_nude_** or anything!"

He smirked. "So you'd noticed, had you?"

Tea felt herself going a bright shade of red which absolutely had to clash with the purple and orange trim on her costume. "Well, of course I did! I mean, I'm alive and everything, aren't I? Unlike some people I could mention. And you're all _there_ and big and naked and…uh, I'm just going to shut up now."

Bakura's smirk had widened to a grin, a very smug grin which Tea itched to wipe off his face. "Anyway," she tried again, desperately, breaking her own promise to keep quiet, "what _are_ you doing here? I gave you very specific instructions to stay put until I got back."

He shrugged again. "I got bored. I've spent enough time lately kicking my heels among the dead. Thought I'd sample the company of the living for a while." He glanced around the deserted streets. "Doesn't seem like there's anyone about, though. Pity."

Tea glowered. "You are going right back to the cemetery this instant!" She turned on the babysitter voice, although it was admittedly a little shaky and squeaky from the events of the night. "You are going to sit right in that clearing and you are going to wait for me. Do you understand?"

"No."

Tea's patience snapped. "No, you don't understand?" she stormed. "What are you, stupid?"

Bakura crossed his arms over his pale, toned chest. "Oh, I understand just fine. But I'm not going back to the cemetery," he informed her calmly. "And you can't make me."

"Oh yeah? You wanna bet?" Tea started scrounging around the corners of her mind for something truly awful she could use against him, when Bakura cleared his throat loudly.

"I mean, you literally cannot make me," he said. "I couldn't go back to the cemetery even if I wanted to. Which I most emphatically do not."

Tea planted her hands on her hips. "Care to explain?"

Bakura sighed. He ran a hand through his wild white mane, looking as though he'd much rather not explain. "When you cast the spell, you bound us together. Remember?"

Tea did have a vague recollection of a lot of binding being mentioned, but it was all kind of a blur. Besides, that was just all mystical mumbo jumbo. It was metaphorical or something. Right?

Apparently not. Bakura heaved a sigh. "We're stuck together," he explained. "Literally stuck. As in, I can't be more than ten yards or so away from you without pain shooting through my whole body." He winced, as if in memory, then spread his hands. "So here I am, bound, body and soul."

Tea bit her lip and stared at him. _Lucky me._


	4. In which a thief plies his trade

Bakura planted a hand on a lean, naked hip. "You're stuck with me," he repeated. A wicked grin played about his lips.

Tea swallowed. "For now," she retorted, belatedly, once she regained her voice. "I already told you; I'm going to fix all this. I'm going to go get a… counterspell. Or something."

"Or something," he echoed, arching a snowy eyebrow in disbelief. He shook his head. "How on earth did you get to be any kind of magic wielder? Clearly, it wasn't by long, hard study."

Tea glared at him, but didn't answer. If she told him the truth—she'd been so desperate to see Atem again, she'd been willing to try anything, no matter how foolhardy—he'd only mock her. Better to simply ignore him.

"I suppose you'll have to come with me," she admitted grudgingly as she started to walk again. It was far from ideal, but she was _going_ to get that counterspell even if she did have to drag Bakura all over Domino to do it.

Bakura shrugged, as if it didn't matter to him what he did with his unexpectedly vacation from the Underworld—or wherever it was that he had been. Where had he been? Hell? Or someplace like it? She opened her mouth to ask, but she was silenced by a screeching cry from across the street.

An elderly lady had just emerged from the _panadería_ on the other side of the street. Her eyes bulged from their sockets and her mouth hung open. _"¡Ay, Dios! ¡La Virgen María y todos los santos, persevanos!"_ she gasped, her face as red as her cherry-colored bandana. Then, before Tea could do anything beside stare, she fainted dead away.

Tea turned to glare at Bakura. He spread his hands in a shrug, giving her a smile that was anything but innocent. "Still want me to tag along?"

_"Yes,"_ she informed him in no uncertain terms. "But not like that," she conceded, making an awkward gesture towards his body. "Um, you'd better get some clothes on first." She felt her cheeks get hot.

Bakura's smile widened into a smirk. "Distracting you, am I?"

She forced her eyes up to his face. "Not at all," she lied, even as fresh flames burst over her face. "But I'd rather not send any little old ladies to the hospital if I can help it." She turned away quickly, scanning the empty streets. "The trouble is, I don't know where we're going to get any clothes," she muttered, more to herself than to him. "Almost nothing's open, and there's no clothing stores on this block anyway—"

"There," Bakura interrupted, pointing.

Tea followed his pale finger. "The Laundromat?" she asked, puzzled. "But…" she trailed off as her thoughts caught pace with his. "Oh no," she said firmly. "You're not going to be stealing anything. Not while you're with me."

A devilish light twinkled in the depths of his smoky topaz eyes. "It's only clothes," he pointed out. "Clearly I need them more than whoever owns them does." The roguish light flashed again. "Even a goody two-shoes like you has to see that."

"I am not a goody two-shoes!" Tea protested. "I—oh, forget it!" She threw up her hands in exasperation. "Why on earth I should care for even a split second what someone like you thinks of me is utterly beyond me." She folded her arms across her chest and heaved a sigh. "Fine, then. Go—"she bit the word out, "—_steal_ from the Laundromat. But only clothes!" she hurried to add. "And only what you need!"

"Go?" Bakura arched an eyebrow at her. "I thought I'd made myself clear. I go where you go. Ergo…" He smirked. "You go where I go."

Tea groaned aloud, but Bakura just clapped her on the back. "Don't worry," he told her. "I've trained lots of thieves, some of whom were almost as hopeless cases as you." He rubbed his hands together. "You can be my apprentice. Now watch the master work."

_I can't believe I'm doing this._ The words rolled through Tea's head in an endless mantra as she followed Bakura inside the laundromat. At least it was open, lit and unlocked. She hadn't actually done anything illegal…yet.

Bakura was already scanning the machines, his eyes gleaming. But quickly, his expression changed to a scowl. The pickings would be slim tonight. There were barely any machines in use and over half of them were washing machines. Tea suppressed a giggle at the idea of Bakura pulling on dripping duds and heading off into the chilly night.

Bakura glared at her. "And just what is so funny?" he wanted to know.

Tea made her face go blank. "Nothing," she replied sweetly. "Just waiting to watch the master work." Her lips twitched.

Bakura threw open the nearest dryer and tore through the contents. Tea bit her lip as he came up with a giant pair of pink panties and a lacy bra. Enraged, Bakura stuffed the undergarments back into the machine and slammed the door closed. He stalked off in search of another dryer, but that one turned out to have a comforter inside, and the next one had the sheets. The fourth machine he tried did have men's clothes inside—but had been started only recently. The clothes were still wet through.

That left only one more machine. Tea held her breath as Bakura ripped open the door. He pawed through its contents—which didn't seem plentiful. At last, he turned to her with an expression that Tea could only describe as dumbfounded.

Tea's breath escaped, along with a sound somewhere between a gasp and a chortle. In one arm, Bakura held a provocatively cut red and black dress, along with a pair of fishnet stockings, that Tea could only guess belonged to someone's (a female someone, she hoped) idea of a sexy Halloween costume. In the other arm, he held a one piece red bodysuit with horns and a tail.

"Well," Tea grinned. "Better the devil you know…"


	5. In which a devil does evil

Tea tapped her foot impatiently, casting her eyes towards the bank of unused machines that bisected the laundromat. "Hurry up, she complained. "I don't have all night, you know."

There was no response from the other side.

Tea folded her arms over her chest. "I don't know why you have to change back there anyway. I mean, it's not like you were wearing any clothes to begin with." She narrowed her eyes, suddenly suspicious. "And what's taking so long?" Not hearing any reply, she started heading to the other side. "If you're trying to escape on me..."

"I can't escape," he reminded her bitterly as he emerged from the other side of the Laundromat. "You chained me to yourself, you damned witch."

"Language," Tea warned him.

"What?" he frowned. "I said _witch_, didn't I?"

Tea would have argued the point further, but the sight of him knocked all other thoughts out of her head. There he was, The Spirit of the Millennium Ring, the single most malevolent being she had ever known, decked from head to toe in a skintight red devil costume. All he needed was the pitchfork.

"Don't you dare laugh," he warned. She almost did anyway, but the look in his eyes froze the laughter right out of her.

So she choked back a chuckle and drew herself up to her full height as she let her run over him. "Well, it's not much of an improvement, but..."

"Improvement?" Bakura snarled. "How is this an improvement?"

Tea planted a hand on her hip. "You want a list? We can start with not making little old ladies pass out on the street and end with me not having to look at your naked butt anymore. Somewhere in between, you can toss in not freezing your man-parts off."

Bakura made an incoherent grumbling sound in the back of his throat.

"Now if you're done showing off your 'master thief' skills, I'd really like to get to the magic shop before the night is over." She made her voice bold and brassy, but there was something about Bakura that made her nervous—despite the ridiculous red costume. There was a kind of energy that pulsed about him—a dark, restless kind of energy.

"Why?" Bakura was frowning.

"What do you mean, why?" Tea scowled. "Believe it or not, I'm not exactly enjoying your company."

"Enough with the insults, woman. My patience does have its limits. But what I meant was, why does it have to be before the night is through? Is that a part of the incantation you used to call me up?"

Tea opened her mouth to make another smart retort, but her mouth dried suddenly. It had been a part of the spell, at least the way the spell had originally been intended to function. The old lady at the shop had told her the spell would bring Atem back for just one night. She looked sideways at Bakura. Did that mean that Bakura would just disappear when the night was over? Or had her screw-up made other things go wrong too?

"You have no idea, do you?" Bakura sighed. "Some kind of witch you are. Back in my day, we had proper sorceress, who could handle a hex and knew their way around the black arts."

"Well, hooray for you," Tea muttered. "Can we go now?"

* * *

The two figures hurried from the laundromat, with its dingy fluorescent lights, into the velvet night. Tea hurried along as best she could, but she was unsure of the way and was too worried about getting lost. It was almost reassuring to hear Bakura's soft footsteps behind her, assuring her she was not alone in the dark streets.

That was absurd. Bakura was by far the most dangerous thing out here this night. So far, she'd gotten around that fact just by not thinking about it, by treating him like he was a minor annoyance or a child who'd stayed up past his bedtime. He'd let her—maybe because she bullied him into forgetting he had a choice, maybe simply because it amused him to do so. But the taut anger in his eyes told her she was running out of time. Sooner or later. Bakura's temper would snap, and it would not be pretty for anyone involved.

* * *

It was sooner.

They were walking along the sidewalk, headed towards the main part of town, when three teenagers—punks, by the looks of them, with as much leather as muscle—came toward them. They took one good look at the two of them and burst into laughter.

"Aw, now isn't that sweet?" mocked one of them, a tall, lean boy with pimply skin and a blue mohawk.

"Aren't you two too old for trick-or-treating?" another of them wanted to know. He was shorter than his friend, but solidly built. He had an ugly scar across the bridge of his pug nose, and his handful of greasy dark hair was streaked with green.

She gave Bakura a look. "Was that really necessary?"

He shrugged. "Maybe not, but it sure the hell was satisfying. Besides, I went easy on him. I didn't even use any shadow magic."

The remaining two punks were frozen on the sidewalk, looking back and forth between their leader, who was now convulsing in agony, and the latex devil who was looking pretty much as scary as the real thing right about now. It would take a moment for their fight or flight response to kick in.

They didn't have a moment.

A few short minutes later, all three punks were lying bleeding on the sidewalk, sobbing hysterically as a hideous green monster advanced on them. Though she was already a block away, Tea cringed when she heard them scream. Bakura just smiled.


End file.
